


World of Digimon 1 - Yui 1

by HootingLance



Category: Digimon - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26521102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HootingLance/pseuds/HootingLance
Summary: A Japanese schoolgirl wins a late night gaming competition and receives a mysterious beta code as a prize.
Kudos: 1





	World of Digimon 1 - Yui 1

The night was growing old. The lights of the internet cafe were turned off, but the room was illuminated by the glow of computer monitors and flashing RGB. A haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air, creating a fog through which masked patrons materialized like phantoms. Many wore masks, more than usual thanks to memories of the coronavirus. The cafe’s heaters were pumping out hot air, valiantly keeping the winter cold at bay. Still, the patrons were rugged up in jumpers, jackets and hoodies which further obscured their features. Yui recognized no one, and hoped the same was true for them. She was still wearing her uniform, but her skirt was unobtrusive enough, and her blouse was covered by her too-large hoodie. 

Yui was in her final year, and on top of her studies; not toping her class by any means, but keeping up. Still, her parents disapproved of her late nights at the internet cafe. It didn’t matter. She needed the catharsis. 

Crazy Lemon was a small cafe, owned by a man named Riku who’d bought the place with an inheritance. Most of the cafe was automated, stocked with vending machines and automatic ticket tellors. The computers were decent but a bit out-dated, so most patrons brought their own equipment for tournaments, which held the real appeal of the establishment. Riku would run a gaming tournament at least once a week, with the grand prize typically being some rare and unique piece of merchandise. Previous winners had received sought-after figures worth tens of thousands of yen, signed copies of rare games, and occasionally even dates with notable Vtubers or idol group members. No one knew exactly what the prize was until after the winner was crowned, and no one knew how Riku could consistently land such treasures, but it kept the crowd coming back. 

Tonight, the game was Street Fighter V, which Yui was decent at, and tonight the tournament was working out in her favour. Out of those players who could consistently beat her, several hadn't turned up tonight, and most of those who had attended were knocked out early. Tonight, luck was on Yui’s side, and she was playing well. 

Finally she reached the final round. Yui and her opponent picked their characters, and play began. Both characters twitched back and forth for a moment, tempting the other to make the first move. Yui scored the first hit, dodging and then briefly juggling her opponent. 

There was a shout of indignation. Yui realized what had happened too late: her opponent had been hit with a bout of lag. Yui hesitated. If she won, no one would stop her from claiming the prize, but the crowd wouldn’t cheer. There’d be muttering: what would have happened if the game hadn't lagged? Could they have reset the game to the point before the lag? Who would have won if the game had been fair? 

Yui made her decision. It was risky, but she could pull it off. She edged forward, and let her opponent catch her. A quick combo, and then Yui disengaged. The crowd swelled. Yui struck back, and a moment later it was over. She had won. 

“Aren’t you a bit young to be out this late?” Riku asked. “You might have missed the last train.”   
“That’s why I want to be heading home. If I can have my prize?” Yui asked. They were in Riku’s tiny office, just off the main gaming room in the cafe. There wasn’t much in the office, just some surveillance equipment and a computer desk.   
“Don't be so presumptuous.” Riku told her. He was holding an envelope in his hands, flicking it between his fingers as he mused to himself. “Do your parents know where you are?”  
“Yes.” Yui told him, not sure what that had to do with anything. The truth was that she wasn’t sure they did, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.   
“You’ve got to be, what, eighteen?”  
“Seventeen.”  
“Perfect.” Riku said, staring at her. He ran the envelope through his fingers. “You wouldn’t be interested in a job here, would you?”   
“Uh, yeah, maybe.” Yui said, trying to sound noncommittal, while privately thinking that she should probably find a different cafe to frequent.   
“Make sure to let me know.” Riku told her, before finally handing her the envelope.   
“Is this my prize?” She asked, eager to leave.   
“A beta code to a new MMO.” Riku explained. “The Digital World. It’s going to be the next big thing, mark my words. A lot of potential. They’ve got the systems all finalized, there’s just a lack of content right now.”   
It didn’t sound like a very good prize.   
“I better not see you selling that on Yahoo.” Riku said, suddenly stern. Yui promised she wouldn’t, and left as soon as she could. Despite Riku’s insistence that the last train would have departed, Yui managed to reach the station in time. She picked a woman-only carriage and sat far away from the only other occupant - a couple of extremely drunk socialites. She wasn’t worried about encountering any trouble, but she wanted to be alone nonetheless. Finally, as the train set off, she found the envelope and ripped it open. Inside was a letter, and what looked like a credit card. She examined this first. It had a magnetic strip on one side, and a smart card chip on the other, but was otherwise blank aside from a single number 10. Shrugging to herself, Yui turned to the letter, but this was completely blank, aside from a 16 digit code and a few lines of basic instructions. Curious, Yui opened the browser on her phone and entered the URL. The browser loaded for a few seconds, longer than typical, though she could have been passing an area of bad reception as the train thundered along. Then the screen refreshed, and a textbox appeared, along with the sentence: Welcome to the Digital World. Yui entered the code, and pressed enter. The phone loaded for a moment, before refreshing, and presenting a new message to her: Hold your card to the chip reader on your smartphone. Frowning, Yui did so, rubbing the mysterious card against the back of her phone. Was it some sort of stand-in for a membership fee? Her phone vibrated briefly to confirm, and before Yui could do anything else, the phone screen lit up as bright as a flash, dazzling her. Her stomach lurched, as though she was about to be sick, and all of a sudden she felt as though she were falling through space. 

The train was gone, swallowed up by the darkness. Her bag, which had been sitting in her lap, fell into nothingness and disappeared, and the letter fluttered away before she could think to grab it. In one hand she had her phone, still blasting her with light, and in the other she held the strange card, everything else was gone. She waved her arms frantically, trying to stop her sudden descent, but it was no use. She tumbled over and over, hair flying about her, until she happened to feel a tug on her right arm, the arm holding her phone. She held it out in front of her, as though she was walking a dog on a leash, and felt herself stabilize. It no longer felt as if she was falling from a great height; instead she was flying upwards. She almost laughed, and then the world brightened once more, swallowing her again, and she found herself standing on solid ground.   
The world around her was dark and gloomy, lit only by the auroras which filled the night skies above. The ground was rocky, with only small weeds clinging to life wherever water happened to collect. The wind howled, and Yui wrapped her arms about herself for warmth. There were no other lights, and no sign of movement anywhere.   
“Hello?” she called out. She switched her phones light on, and swept it across the landscape. As she passed it over a rocky outcrop, the eyes of some creature lit up in red. Yui jumped and yelped in fright, almost dropping her phone as she did so, and when she pointed the light back toward the creature, the eyes were gone. Steeling her resolve, and figuring that it was probably just a rabbit or fox at the worst, Yui approached the outcrop.   
“Go away!”   
Yui stopped, confused. The small voice had come from a small crack in the rock, much too small for a child to fit into. She shone her light into it, and almost jumped in fright again, for in the crack sat a small creature, the side of a guinea pig. It was round like a hacky sack, with a long, thick tail twice as long as its body. It didn’t appear to have any arms or legs, but did have three rounded horns above round, sad eyes.   
“Go away!” it said again. Yui’s heart broke for it. The creature surely wouldn’t have weighed more than five kilograms, and it was shivering with some combination of fear and cold. Its voice was squeaky, but she could tell it was trying to be brave.   
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” She told it.   
“Go away!” it told her. Then with a big effort, the creature sucked in a big gulp of air, so much that it visibly inflated, and blew a stream of bubbles at her. Yui waved them away.   
“Its okay.” She said, reaching into the crack in the rock. The small creature bit her fingers when she picked it up, but the poor thing had neither teeth nor the strength to bite down hard, and so Yui ignored it and pulled it in close to her chest.   
“My name’s Yui, what’s yours?” She asked it.  
The creature, quickly deciding that nothing so warm and cosy could be dangerous, snuggled in. “Conomon.” it answered, closing its eyes. 

Yui awoke the following morning to find herself in her bed, dressed in her pajamas as though it had just been the most normal of evenings. From the other room she could hear her mother busy cooking breakfast, and her father bustling around getting ready for work. Her phone was plugged in and charging beside her. And beside it sat the creature from the previous night. It had grown larger, losing the tail but sprouting a large muscular foot instead, like a snail, along with a pair of small ears. It was sleeping peacefully, inflating and deflating as it breathed in and out, looking like a slightly melted pile of chocolate pudding. Yui stared at the sleeping creature for a long while, not sure whether or not she was still dreaming, until she noticed that the creature wasn’t the only new thing sitting on the floor beside her bed. There was also a small device, with a screen and only three buttons, and the letter from the previous night. She picked it up, and somehow wasn’t surprised to find that new writing had appeared. Along with the beta code and web address, a single line of text had appeared: Treat her well.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I hope you enjoyed. I'm trying to get back into writing after a while of not working on stuff for multiple reasons. This is the first chapter of a story which I've always wanted to write about, but I couldn't think of a good setting other than digimon, so I figured what the hell, I'll make it into a digimon fic. I'll expand on that more as I get around to it, if I end up doing so. 
> 
> I've only done some vague plotting out (I'm intending on acting more like a gardener with this one) so I'll probably change as I go, but I've got a rough plan for 4 arcs. This first arc is going to be called Tutorial, and will mostly about the various players in the closed beta getting to understand the digital world.


End file.
